


The Coal Miners Daughter

by lifelesslyndsey



Series: The Baker's Son Series [1]
Category: Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, Hunger Games, Series: The Baker's Son
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-25
Updated: 2012-04-25
Packaged: 2017-11-04 07:43:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 801
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/391417
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lifelesslyndsey/pseuds/lifelesslyndsey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Katniss can't fathom why Peeta would volunteer in place of Gale. Still, she's grateful. </p><p> </p><p>Part of The Baker's Son series.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Coal Miners Daughter

**Author's Note:**

> The Hunger Games Series are in no way mine, nor do I profit by any of the following words.
> 
> AU- Instead of Peeta's name being pulled, it's Gales. Doesn't mean the boy isn't going to the Games though.

 

 

Not Prim. Not _Prim_.

 

Her feet were moving before her mouth could, but her lips caught up even as the Peacekeepers caught her arms with bruising force. “I volunteer!” Her voice comes out hysterical and too high, not her voice at all. “I volunteer as tribute.”

 

Nothing registers around her after that. The world goes . The silence was crushing, only the sound of her own blood beating against her ear drums. For all she knew, District Twelve could have been screaming, but Katniss couldn't hear a thing. What little she managed to eat threatens to rebel as she carries herself to the stage, the sound of Prim's cries and the vision of Gale's eyes burned into her memory forever.

 

And the world stops for a second time.

 

“Gale Hawthorne!”

 

No. _No_.

 

Who would take care of Prim and her mother? Who would take care of Gale's family? No, they couldn't both go. Is this a punishment? Are they being punished for poaching? She knows with perfect certainty that no force in the world could make her kill Gale, and she's sure he's to stubborn to turn his knife on her. Which means unless some one else takes them out, they'll both die.

 

But one of them must live though. One of them _must_ win. It will be Gale, she decides. His chances alone were solid enough, but with her championing him, he stands an actual chance. He won't see it that way, but that does not matter to her. One of them must win, and it will be Gale.

 

It isn't until a hand takes her, palms calloused and rough, that the world snaps back into place. _Gale_. When she looks up, it's not Gales face she find, but someone else entirely. She's missed something, clearly.

 

Peeta Mellark has offered himself as Tribute in place of Gale. No, she thinks. _Oh no, not Peeta._

 

He's a memory to her, the boy with the bread. The face he's making now, it's the same as it was then. It's not pity, she thinks, but something else. Something pleading. They're standing on a stage before all of District Twelve, enemies made by the product of paper in a fish bowl and sacrifice, and he's _holding her hand_. He's holding her hand like they won't be set out upon each other on a man-made war field. He's holding her hand and looking at her, just like he did the last time she was sure hope was lost. Like the bread, this gesture, this off-handed kindness, it's offered so freely she can barely believe it. Why, she thinks, why on Earth would he do it?

 

She doesn't need to know the answer to know that she's grateful. They're going to die, and she's grateful.

 

Katniss knows in that moment that she won't kill him. That she can't. She cannot kill the boy with the bread. The boy who laid his own life down for reasons she doesn't understand. The boy who held her hand when it went against everything to do so. Their will be twenty four Tributes, so odds are, she won't have too. It's not a comforting thought.

 

Looking at him again, Katniss can tell that his thoughts are not so different than her own. Something inside her bubbles over, and then she's stepping forward, wordlessly taking Peeta with her. If he can be bold, she can be bold. His offering is odd, but not too odd. It's his hands that spur her. His actions might seem small, a simple measure of curling his fingers into her own, but she knows, she knows such things are never without repercussion. His bravery, even so small, fuels her. With her chin lifted high, she takes to the center stage, even as Effie blusters on. Peeta is not unwilling, his arm loose but his fingers tight. He moves with her as she lifts their joined hands between them, holding them high for all to see.

 

Their hands drop, but their chins don't. Camera are rolling, and Katniss does not need to look behind her to know that it's them, she and Peeta, that fill the screen. Tributes air live, always for the promise of real-time drama. They'd have served the rabid watchers enough simply by offering themselves – the two tributes who _weren't_. This though, this unholy union between Tributes, it's unheard of. It smacks of rebellion, but there is nothing to be done now. Panem has seen it. What's done is done.

 

 _Let them know,_ she thinks. Let them know she isn't their pawn.

 

She catches site of Haymitch where he lingers at the edge of the stage. He's giving them the gimlet eye, narrowed, hard, but curious. When the anthem ends, she and Peeta are torn apart, frog marched from the stage by insistent Capitol hands.


End file.
